OPINION – As the war between Iran and America (plus Israel) enters its second week, a close examination of its asymmetric and higher-order effects is more critical than ever. Competing media narratives have failed to understand and appreciate both America’s and Israel’s rationale for attacking Iran using pre-emptive strikes, as well the logic and reason behind Iran’s forceful, asymmetric response to the decimation of its senior clerical leadership – and what this means for the entire Middle East going forward.

President Trump’s boldness, following his military strike on Venezuela and capture of its leader Nicolas Maduro in January 2026, has a ‘Reaganesque’ quality and resolve. The same might be argued for President Trump’s earlier (e.g. January 2020) targeted assassination of the head of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani. For adversary foreign opponents of President Trump, January has often been the cruelest month. But as President Reagan learned after his 1986 strikes against Libya and its late leader, Muammar Qaddafi, things don’t always proceed as planned, and higher-order effects and ‘black swans’ must be considered.

While the Trump administration has shown confusion at times, and has not articulated its war messaging well, I suspect that what President Trump hoped for, more than the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program, its missile programs, and its expert of terror abroad, was a new Iranian leadership that would somehow, eventually, become part of his legacy and vision of peace – his signature achievement in the Middle East, the Abraham Accords.

But understanding this also leads to a paradox, and it explains why Iran has attacked those allies which (in the GCC, plus Saudi Arabia and Israel) who had signed onto the Abraham Accords. For Iran’s clerics, the Abraham Accords represent, even more than Israel or America, an existential threat to their theocracy and vision for the Islamic Republic of Iran. President Trump’s dreams and hopes for peace in the Middle East, following this most recent attack on Iran, while admirable and singularly aspirational, may no longer be realistic.

The killing of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini, who had the blood of tens of thousands of Americans, victims of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world, and yes, Iranian citizens on his hands, was a necessary act. But it ignores not only the depth of his hatred for America, Israel, and the West, which no obituary can capture, but the ideology – velayat e faqih – which sustained him and the clerical leadership since 1979. The late Ayatollah Khameini was hardly the smiling, avuncular grandfather as depicted in a recent media report, but a determined, ferocious, and ideologically, driven adversary, for whom martyrdom would always be a preferred outcome to making a deal with the hated devils – Israel and America. Unlike his predecessor and founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, Khameini would never allow himself to drink from the ‘poisoned chalice’ to make peace with the enemy.

The asymmetric nature of Iran’s response to the current attacks by America and Israel, are not, as depicted in some western media and think tank circles, mere acts of desperation, but more likely, part of a more drawn-out strategy of hybrid warfare tactics. In this sense, the Iranians have utilized their own doctrine, but appear to have learned from the Ukraine war, that an emboldened, hardened enemy can use drones, missiles, cyber-attacks, economic warfare, higher oil prices, the closure of the Hormuz Straits, and effective propaganda to achieve partial levels of parity with a much more powerful opponent.

The killing of its leadership makes peace with America a very hard sell for Iranian hardliners, who hate Israel and America, now more than ever. And there are NO Iranian moderates in the current, surviving government. Possible successors, such as the leader of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, remain die-hard hardliners. The attacks on Iran’s leadership, while tactically bold, ignored two fundamental truths: (1) the built-in, multiple structures of redundancy in Iran’s government, e.g. the Office of the Supreme Leader; the Assembly of Experts, the Guardian Council; the Supreme National Security Council; and the massive power of the IRGC, embedded throughout Iranian political, economic, and social structures; and (2), the doctrine of clerical rule, embedded in the Iranian Constitution. While President Trump has offered negotiations to his Iranian interlocutors – and it is likely that some discussions continue between special envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and their Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, this is not the time for successful negotiations. We have often fallen prey to false thinking, in that Iranian government officials, even when educated in the West, and appreciative of western culture (ex: Larijani is a scholar of philosophy and of Immanuel Kant), will somehow ‘be’ more western, or amenable to western concepts of ideology, reason, and justice. They are rational — but in their own way.

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In going to war with Iran, understanding their psychology, and that of the leadership, is more critical than ever. Iran is not Venezuela. Nor is it Syria. Their system is more resilient than we reckoned. We forget, at our peril, that the Iranian regime lost over 1 million citizens during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. And it recently slaughtered over 30,000 of their citizens, innocent protesters, in matter of a few days during January. For those tragic victims, January is indeed the cruelest month.

There are other variables worth considering. Iran is a complex, pluralistic, and conservative – especially the middle-class bazaaris and small business owners – society, over 90 million citizens, well-educated, and connected with the outside world. While it’s a civilization going back thousands of years – this too is part of Iran’s national pride – it is also a youthful society, with over 50% if its population under the age of 35.

The Iranian government will draw a key conclusion from this war, as did the Ukrainians and the Libyans (of course, North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong-un is smiling): that had they had nuclear weapons, this war would NOT have happened. The worst-case scenario- this is our nightmare, and a huge challenge for our intelligence community – is that Iran could now say, “We don’t need to build a nuke. We can buy it, along with a few long-range ICBMs, such as the Hwasong-20, which can reach the shores of America. From whom? From North Korea, obviously, which needs cash, badly so.” Stopping such future proliferation will remain our (and Israel’s) biggest challenge.

Bottom line: the war with Iran has emerged as way more complex than seen at first glance, and the higher order effects are both fascinating and chilling. So, as 2026 continues, all eyes are once again, on President Trump. It’s his move, again. Given his and America’s prestige on the line, there is now, more than ever, no margin for error. Understanding Iran’s next generation of leaders, and their psychology, is crucial to prevail.

Dr. Kenneth Dekleva served as a Regional Medical Officer/Psychiatrist with the U.S. Dept. of State from 2002-2016 and is currently the CEO of Blackwood Advisory Solutions LLC and Professor of Psychiatry, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX. The views expressed by Dr. Dekleva are entirely his own and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government, the U.S. Dept. of State, or UT Southwestern Medical Center.

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